Mission San Diego Alcala - Designed by a 9 year old

thingiverse

My friend's daughter found my 3D printer fascinating, so she decided to use it for her 4th grade California Mission project. If she designed it, I promised to print it. To create her project, she spent a month learning TinkerCad after school, diligently following online tutorials. As a result of her hard work, I had to keep my promise and ran the printer for 16 hours or more. The mission model was quite impressive, with only the bell not designed by her. She sourced the bell from Thingiverse. This project wasn't based on any specific scale; however, she tried to maintain proportions using a ruler, pictures, Google Earth, and her own estimation of ratios. Through this process, she learned how to break down objects into basic geometric shapes due to TinkerCad's design approach. I thought it would be interesting to collaborate with the math teacher to explore ratios more deliberately in future projects. To increase efficiency, I considered using a laser cutter to speed up production by cutting walls through. Printing per student for 16 hours wouldn't be feasible.